One Last Prank
by arandomshipper
Summary: Well into their Golden Years, Sam decides to get Spenser one last time. It doesn't quite go as planned. Sequel to And You Let Her Go. Rated for extreme angst and adult themes.


Disclaimer: I'm not an owner, I'm just a random shipper.

 **One Last Prank**

From the living room came the sounds of a television and children laughing and playing. In the kitchen, and old woman, perhaps seventy, was washing dishes and humming a little tune.

The sounds from the living room were interrupted by a sharp voiced woman telling the children to settle down and either watch the tv and stop yelling, or turn it off. The children complied, and the speaker, a woman with light brown hair in her mid-thirties, entered the kitchen.

"Baby, you need to relax a little and let the kids be kids. You're too uptight. Reminds me so much of your father at times like this." The old woman said without turning from her task.

The younger woman sighed at the sight of her mother working away. "Mom, I told you when you moved in with us, you don't need to do the chores around here."

A snort. "I do what I want. If I feel like doing the dishes, I'm doing the dishes, and no one, least of all my daughter, is going to tell me no."

"I worry about you."

"Well, stop worrying. I'm still young and strong. Just look at these guns. Look!" She kissed a bicep ostentatiously.

The younger woman laughed. "Yes, I'm sure you're the strongest grandmother alive. But you have enough to do with taking care of Uncle Spenser."

Her mother's voice somehow grew softer and harder at the same time. "Taking care of your Uncle Spenser is no burden. Lord knows I gave him more trouble growing up than he could ever give me now. I can take care of him and do every chore in this house. I'm as fit as can be! I've still got my legs. My eyes. My...my mind..." She trailed off, and her activity slowed.

The woman looked at her mother with sympathy. She took her arm and led her to a seat at the table. The old woman, much more subdued now, allowed it. "I never got to see much of him before...you know. Tell me about when he was younger." She knew that topic was one that would cheer her mother up.

As predicted, the old woman brightened. "Your Uncle Spenser was...a unique man. Immature, irresponsible, downright silly. He was an artist, you know."

"Yes, I know. I've seen his galleries."

"Oh, yes, that's right. Everyone's seen his galleries. But his art that you've seen, since he...'came into his own', I think is the phrase, is different than it used to be. Back then, it was a reflection of his personality. Haphazard, absentminded, eclectic things. Not so popular. And yet, there was something at the core of it. Something substantial, that held it all together. And that's just how he was. No matter how scatterbrained he could be, no matter how irresponsible, when it came to what really mattered, he always came through. Always there at the right time, doing the right thing, like some kind of superhero. It's such a cliche, and it doesn't begin to sufficiently say it, but he was a good man. Who else would take in a rowdy, irredeemable, disrespectful, delinquent twelve year old who he had no obligation to whatsoever? Especially at his age. When most people in their mid-twenties are only thinking of themselves and maybe their significant other, he was giving away the prime of his life to take care of me and your Aunt Carly, without so much as a word of complaint."

The daughter could sense the conversation turning melancholy, so she attempted to steer it in a lighter direction. "What about before that?"

"Before that?" The other woman responded with surprise. She turned thoughtful. "I don't know a whole lot about him from before we met, but I have picked up a few things along the way. Like how he left law school to pursue his art. Just as well. He may have made a lot of money, but that kind of life would've killed him, I think." She gave a sudden bark of laughter. "He told us once about his time in summer camp. I was in a pretty vicious pranking phase, and Carly and Freddy couldn't handle it anymore, so they went to him to try to get me back. That was when we found out that he was called the 'Prank King' when he was younger."

"The Prank King!" The younger woman chortled. "I can't even imagine it now."

"Yes, he's changed quite a bit since then." Her mother smiled fondly. "But at the time, we got to see first hand how he got the title. Pranking was a perfect outlet for his freakishly creative mind. He was a natural at it. I had considered myself to be a competent prankster, but he made me look like an amateur. Unfortunately, it also proved to be somewhat addictive for him. Apparently, he was only able to stop the first time because one of his pranks went wrong and caused some serious pain to a classmate. This time, he was too experienced to do anything like that, and he was too far gone to listen to any of us. I tried to make him stop by outpranking him. Oh, how I tried! But it was hopeless. I wasn't in his league, and it only spurred him on. There was no end in sight to his pranks."

"How'd you get him to stop?" She asked, fascinated.

"We looked up his classmates from back then and asked them to have a heart to heart with him."

"And they managed to convince him to stop?"

"Not exactly..." The old woman looked away uncomfortably. "They...kind of beat him up."

"They beat him up!?"

"It was fine, though! No permanent damage, and he did quit pranking after that. On the other hand, it's a bit of a shame. He was quite the prank genius. I couldn't keep up with him, but it was fun to see him at work at the time, if only he could've controlled himself a little. I never got the chance to try to push him off of his throne." She went quiet, a mysterious, contemplative expression on her face.

 **SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**

Spenser lay in his bed, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Golden years, people called it. He supposed that was true for him. His middle years had been good, too, but he was mostly alone, if content. Carly and Sam had families to raise. He'd go see them every now and then, "Uncle Spenser" dropping by for a visit (he thought of them more as grandchildren than nieces and nephews, but uncle was just fine by him), but most of his time was spent secluded, creating the art for which he had become famous.

It was funny how his art career reflected his life so well. The early years full of whimsy and eccentricity, and not very appealing to the common consumer. The middle years so angsty, full of palpable pain, the kind of pain that anyone could feel, even if they couldn't understand it. That had been when his art career took off. He gained even more prestige during his third and final interval, though. His art became tranquil, giving the viewer distinct sense of calmness, yet with the feelings of prior years layered underneath. A hint of nostalgia and faint longing, a dash of silliness, the playful creativity of his youth.

Art for him had been fun, and then a necessary outlet for his pain, and then fun again. Of course, all of that ended quite some time ago. His eyes went, and with them went his drive to create. By that time, Sam and Freddy's children had grown and moved out, so they insisted on taking him in. He didn't put up much of a fight. All those years alone had taken a toll on him. Even before he lost his vision, his mind had started to fade. With no one else to talk to much of the time, he had taken to talking to himself, as Sam and Freddy discovered when he moved in with them. Mild dementia. That's what it was called. He was more or less okay with it. He joked that there wasn't really much difference, and there was even some truth to that. He'd always been a bit random and wacky, now those traits were exacerbated by his crumbling mind. It was a precursor to an early death, so he was told by the doctors, and he was okay with that, too. He was more than happy with the life he'd already had, and being together with Sam and Freddy at the end was the perfect way to end it.

However, contrary to his expectations, he persisted year after year. He even outlived Freddy, who died at the age of seventy-three. That was a very sad time, two years ago. Sam's oldest daughter, one of the few people on earth as stubborn as Sam herself, had insisted that Sam and Spenser must live with her and her family, now that they were too old to take care of themselves. Of course, Sam disagreed with that strongly. She probably never would've consented, if it weren't for Spenser's deteriorating condition. She finally gave in, allowing that it would be better to have more people around in case something went wrong. They'd been living in this house ever since. Well, Sam had. Spenser had been travelling through space and time, never knowing where he would go next...in his head, anyway. Physically, he travelled nowhere. His legs had given out just prior to Freddy's death, and he was bedridden.

Nevertheless, lame, blind, and addled as he was, he thought that this was probably the best time of his life. He had plenty of fun when his mind was drifting, and when he returned to the present, there was family all around. Grandchildren (those he thought of as grandchildren), great-grandchildren, and...Sam. His Sam. When he had finally let her go all those years ago, she had somehow become even more his than ever. Her successes were his successes. Her joys were his joys. He was far more proud of the person she had become and the life she had lived than he could possibly be of his own world-renowned art. That he got to be with her every day was like a dream come true. True, when he was lucid enough to understand what was happening, it saddened and embarrassed him that she had to take care of him in so many ways now, changing his sheets and bedpans and all the other messy details involved in caring for someone as far gone as he. But that was who he was now, and he couldn't change it. There never had been and never would be a reason for him to pretend to be something greater than he was with her. It's not like the state he was in now would suddenly change her opinion of him. He hadn't exactly been all that dignified to begin with, and she somehow seemed to respect him anyway.

As he pondered all of this, his mind wavering somewhere between the present and a dusty field where he tried to tame an elephant-headed wild stallion before the British arrived with their artillery, he sensed a disturbance. Loss of vision had left him slightly more aware of changes in the movement of air in the room.

"Who's there?"

"It's just me."

"Oh, hi, me." He contemplated for a moment. "I sound a little different, today."

A cough. "Yeah, uh, might be coming down with something."

"Oh. I hope not." He paused. "What was I talking about, again?"

"I was talking about the most embarrassing moments of my life." A snicker.

"I was?" He asked, confused. He gave a mental shrug. "Hmm. Okay. I guess that's a new topic. Might as well relive the bad with the good, right?"

"Right. I was just trying to decide which was the most embarrassing of all."

"Ah. Yes. That's a tough one. There's so many to choose from."

"Maybe I should list a few of them."

"Yeah. Let's see. Well, there was that time I got stuck head first in the ventilation, and Carly, Sam and Freddy tried to pull me out, but they just pulled off my pants instead."

A chuckle. "Oh, yeah. I remember that. That was pretty funny."

He frowned. "It was funny? I don't remember thinking it was funny at the time. I guess time can really change your persepective on these things."

"Yeah. So what else should be on my list?"

"What else. There was that time when I was going out with Andrea. She was into those upscale, fancy places that have all those weird, uspoken rules that everyone is supposed to know. Of course, I didn't know any of them at the time, so I was doing something wrong every couple of seconds. It was a night of perpetual embarrassment, and I really topped it off when the tablecloth got caught on my pants as I got up to go to the bathroom, and I spilled Andrea's dinner all over her. I got dumped before the date was even over, that time."

There was a long pause. Finally, he heard his voice hesitantly say, "I used to date a lot back then."

"Yeah." He reluctantly agreed.

"And then I just stopped, because..." It almost sounded like there was a question at the end, even though that made no sense. He knew all of this already.

"I don't talk about that. Never. Not even to myself. Can't say it." He whispered.

"...Maybe I should, now. It doesn't matter, anymore. It's all in the past."

"Not exactly..." He protested.

"But it's been so many years. What could it hurt, now? It's not good to keep these things bottled up forever." His voice was all forced cheerfulness.

He went quiet for a long time, thinking about it. He hadn't thought he'd ever talk about this. At the time, he'd been so petrified that someone would find out. A great deal of who he was had been dedicated to never letting anyone so much as suspect, hiding it all away so carefully. But...maybe he was ready to talk about it now. That part of him that he didn't recognize that was insisting that he bring it up just might be right. Finally speaking it out might just give him some form of release that he'd been denying himself all this time.

"Maybe I can talk about it, after all."

"Yeah, I think I can." Relief, or something similar, was evident in his voice.

He paused for a long moment, opening and then closing his mouth again repeatedly. Despite his new resolve, voicing something he'd been restraining himself from even thinking about for most of his life was not easy. Try as he might, he couldn't say it directly. Luckily, that part of his voice that he hardly recognized as his own that had been egging him on the whole time got him started. "I stopped dating because..."

"Because there wasn't any point anymore. I was only dating to distract myself from _her_. Once she wasn't around, I didn't need to do that anymore. I could think about her all the time. It wasn't _dangerous_."

There was another long pause. It was a bit strange when his voice repeated, "Her." so hesitantly and confusedly. Almost begging himself to elaborate. It was good, though. It forced him to say it. Everything. Pulled it right out of him. Once the flow started, it was like the breaking of a dam. It poured out in a torrent of relief.

"Her. It was love at first sight, you know? Ugly, nasty, terrible love at first sight. Am I a bad person because of that? I've always thought I was, but to some degree I couldn't even blame myself. Instead, I just wondered why everyone else didn't fall for her just like I did. So beautiful. So strong. The strongest person I've ever met, physically and emotionally. It was a wonder she didn't have to beat the guys off with a stick. Well, she did a few times, but that was later. And I'll tell me what, it took everything in me not to be one of those guys. I could forgive myself my terrible desire just a bit, because I never acted on it."

His other voice chimed into the brief pause, still sounding hesitant and unsure. "It was difficult, because she didn't feel that way about me..."

"I've never really thought about it that way, but yes, it was. To see her look at another guy like I wanted her to look at me. To see another guy have everything I ever wanted. If he was a bad guy, I don't know what I would've done, how I would've handled it. But he was a good guy, so I was able to bear it somehow. Besides, that was nowhere near as difficult as when she DID feel that way about me. That time of my life was an absolute nightmare. All these years later, I still don't know how I was able to bear it. I'm so glad I did, though."

He heard his voice raise a little in excitement. He was almost to the heart of it now. Just a little more, and everything he'd ever hid away would be out there, spoken into the ether, like he'd never dared to before. "I couldn't act on my feelings, even though it was mutual, because..."

He really wished that the other, stronger, more probing part of his voice would just finish it. It hurt less when that part of him was talking. But it always cut out at the most important parts, leaving the scared, reluctant painful part of him to speak out the rest. "Because I was her guardian." He finally whispered. He heard a sudden, sharp, shocked intake of breath. Apparently, he hadn't thought he could go through with actually saying it out loud. Now that he had, though, he might as well spit it out in all its sordid detail. "She was just a kid. Only ten when I met her. How could I even think such things about a ten-year-old? I'm despicable. And then I was charged with raising her. How could I ever think something like that about a kid I was supposed to be taking care of? But I did. I did. And then she fell for me too, and oh, God, the pain. I wanted to die, some days, because that would be easier than keeping my dirty hands off of her. That's why, no matter how it hurt when she finally got a boyfriend, I wasn't sad. That pain was so much less. So much less. I could endure that."

As he spoke, he heard his voice hitch, and then the sobs started. It was strange, because he didn't feel sad anymore. His remembered sadness didn't feel poignant enough to bring him to tears, yet he could hear the sounds of sobbing nonetheless. For some reason, as he continued to speak through the sobbing, his voice remained clear. "When she moved out, the pain of not having her around anymore was nothing compared to the relief that for the first time in eight years, she was safe from me. I could love her like I was supposed to all along, like a normal guardian."

He became wistful. "The old feelings of selfish desire resurfaced for a while when she got engaged, but then the most amazing thing happened. At her wedding, when I was in a fog, cycling through pain, some kind of almost-wish that I had given in to my selfish desires, and self-hatred, she said something to me, something that changed everything in an instant. It cleansed me of every bit of bad feelings I had about everything, and gave me absolute certainty that I had made all the right decisions. It was easily the happiest moment of my life. Even though I still don't like to talk about this, I'm totally okay with the way everything turned out, and I have no regrets, because of that one word. She called me 'Dad'."

At his final word, the biggest loudest sob he'd ever heard in his life filled the room. It shocked him into silence. As he lay there trying to figure out what was going on, he felt great drops of water on his face. He began flailing around. "Hey! Who turned on the faucet? How'd I get outside in the rain?"

And then he heard a voice that was distinctly not his own whisper into his ear. "I loved my husband very much. But I love you the most. I always have and I always will. Dad." And then lips that tasted as salty as the ocean pressed against his for a brief moment.

"Sam?" He whispered fearfully. "Sam?!" He started panicking.

But his voice answered him back cheerfully. "Nope. Just me."

He immediately relaxed. "Oh. Hey, me. What'm I talking about today?"

"Whatever I want, Spenser. Whatever I want."

 **A/N:** If you had trouble following the conversation, here are a couple of guidelines that may help. If it says "He said" or something similar, it's Spenser. If it says "He heard his voice say" or something similar, it's Sam. Also, every time there is a new paragraph, the speaker changes, with one obvious exception in the middle, and another near the end.


End file.
